Some Opposition MPs kept away from the tea party the government hosted after Thursday’s budget speech — though not all of them, and the two explanations on offer do not quite agree.
A Samagi Jana Balawegaya (SJB) MP who did not wish to be named said Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa had asked them not to participate, the Daily Mirror reported on Friday morning.
Two accounts
Chief Opposition Whip Gayantha Karunatilaka gave the Daily Mirror a scheduling explanation rather than a political one. A meeting of the SJB Parliamentary Group had been fixed for immediately after the budget, he said: “We will have to attend this meeting and therefore we may not be able to focus on the tea party.”
The anonymous MP’s account — that the Opposition Leader asked members not to attend — and the Whip’s account are not strictly incompatible, since a group meeting can be scheduled precisely in order to occupy the same hour. Neither the Whip nor Premadasa is reported as denying the instruction, and the filing does not put the claim to either of them.
Not a complete boycott
Whatever the intent, the attendance was mixed. Opposition MPs including Rauff Hakeem and Shanakiyan Rasamanickam were seen at the tea party, according to eyewitnesses cited by the paper. Both sit with parties allied to the opposition rather than within the SJB itself.
MP Dayasiri Jayasekara confirmed that the Opposition Leader did hold a discussion with MPs while the tea party was going on — which supports the scheduling account without settling the question of why the meeting was fixed then.
Context
The post-budget tea party is a parliamentary convention rather than an official event: the government hosts members across the chamber after the speech. Staying away is a recognised and low-cost form of protest, which is also why its meaning is ambiguous — an absence can be read as a snub or as a diary clash, and here both readings have been offered.
The SJB has taken a consistently adversarial line on this budget. The party has run an Oversight.lk website tracking budget promises against delivery, and the budget was presented against a wider argument about whether professionals and public servants received meaningful relief — a complaint pressed this week by public service engineers on symbolic strike and by a medical association president warning of an exodus of doctors. The second reading debate on the budget began on Friday.
Sourcing
A single-source report, carrying a Daily Mirror parliamentary byline. The central claim — that Premadasa instructed MPs to stay away — rests on one unnamed MP and is reported here as that MP’s assertion, not as established fact.
Not reported
The filing does not say how many MPs stayed away or how many attended, does not report any comment from Premadasa or from the government, and does not say where or when the tea party was held. Neither the SJB nor the Opposition Leader’s office is reported as having been asked whether such an instruction was issued.